Jeff C

MUSIC (‘99, ‘06)

How did you come out?

After being married for six months and opening the box of my brain labeled “Jeff’s sexuality” right when you get married, it just came flooding out and everything became worse. So, I told my wife at six months what was going on and we just decided to kind of give it some time and see where it went. We were best friends. And so, we honestly had a really great relationship.

How was your experience at BYU?

It was interesting kind of watching people at BYU. Obviously, this is a place where they come together, they date, they get married. There was an excitement about that. But if you’re queer, or gay, or anywhere on that spectrum, it was a fear-based thing, not a joyful-based thing. So it was that mixture of fear and joy kind of all at the same time.

Can you describe one good and one bad experience you had at BYU?

Really meaningful for me at least. The difficulty kind of came in with having to hide and feeling like they all like me, I think they really like me but they don’t know me. It’s still just this facade. I’ve created a person that fits within the Mormon culture and the hyper-Mormon culture at BYU at that.

How was your mission experience?

I served my mission ‘93 to ‘95 in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida mission. My first area was South Beach, which in 1993 was a bit of a gay mecca. So, it was interesting. I spent three months on South Beach to start my mission. And again, this is right after I came out to myself. So, it was a lot of imagery, a lot of people. Beautiful people riding around on roller blades wearing only Speedos as one did in the ‘90s. It was kind of in my face with that. But a lot of my mission was really good because I felt the camaraderie that I was lacking with other guys and that, for me, was very beneficial.

How was your experience at BYU?

A therapist that I went and saw at the counseling center encouraged me to go check out some books from the library. And I was so afraid. I went to the library, I found these three books that dealt with homosexuality (that I would not recommend today to any person). I grabbed these three books and then I grabbed like nine more books off the shelf related to human sexuality, in case anybody saw what I was doing with a stack of books, I could say, “Oh, I’m writing a paper on human sexuality.” I check them all out, walk out of the library, toss them in the return bin except for the three that I really needed. So, that’s the level of fear because why does a circulation desk care what I’m taking out, but there was still fear in even checking out books.

Answers to the questions are transcribed from Jeff’s video interview and lightly edited for clarity. The transcription does not cover the entire video.

Posted June 2021